Microsoft, Yahoo!, the merger and Google - Mail - LiveSide

Microsoft, Yahoo!, the merger and Google - Mail

Last time we took a look at Search, let us take a look at Mail now.

Looking at the above, the rankings are:
1. Yahoo! - Yahoo! Mail
2. Microsoft - Windows Live Hotmail
3. Google - Gmail

In this area, what would a Microsoft/Yahoo! merger mean? Google is far behind (user base) wether there will be a merger or not. Can Google catch up? Let's compare some (main) features:

Web Mail	Windows Live Hotmail	Yahoo! Mail	Gmail
Storage	5/10 GB (Plus)	unlimited	6 GB+
Attachment size	10/20 MB (Plus)	10/20 MB (Plus)	20 MB for total message
Email Client Access*	Free Windows Live Mail Microsoft Office Outlook Connector Pay Hotmail Plus, MSN Premium	Free retrieval in some countries, SMTP requires Plus Pay Yahoo! Mail Plus	Free
More info	Homepage/wikipedia	Homepage/wikipedia	Homepage/wikipedia

*Not taking into account third party software retrieving mail from webmail services not supporting POP3 access.

What's going to happen with these two (free) webmail services? Will they co-exist, or will Yahoo! Mail disappear into Windows Live Hotmail? If the latter, current Yahoo! Mail users will not be pleased as their online storage will decrease from unlimited to 5 GB. Unless of course Microsoft is going to offer the same for Windows Live Hotmail. If Microsoft does not, do you think that would drive current Yahoo! Mail users to Gmail? And what if Microsoft is going to offer at least the storage space Gmail offers now?

Published Feb 10 2008, 06:43 PM by Sunshine

Filed under: Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Mail, MSFT-YHOO

Comments

	Mephiles said: Personally, I never liked Yahoo! Mail that much, and Gmail is just terrible. Infact, the hole of Google is terrible. It just used four basic pale colours and a white background. February 10, 2008 6:52 PM
	tophtucker said: How do we know that Hotmail wouldn't disappear into Yahoo! Mail? For one thing, doesn't Yahoo! have more customers? And they have some nice features that Hotmail lacks... in either case, it'd be a shame to see so much work developing an all-new platform go to nothing. February 10, 2008 8:13 PM
	WyzyrdMyrrlyn said: i think they should keep the windows live UI but add the disposable-name features Yahoo has. I wish I had a Yahoo! account to use, as my @live.com account started getting spammed like mad. With Yahoo!, I could just trash an expendable account such as username-1@yahoo.com, where username-tag@yahoo.com was the format and the individual -tag address can be trashed while the username address remains. I wish MSFT had that February 10, 2008 8:50 PM
	quikboy said: I think the only good noticable features Y! Mail has are RSS feeds and IM. Also the ease of ability to send messages via e-mail, text, or IM. Those should be integrated into Live Hotmail too. Funny thing is, is that I always get spam from Y! Mail, but rarely ever from Live Hotmail. I don't know why. People keep saying Hotmail junk filtering is bad, but I don't find it that way. I think a person receiving junk mail is due to telling strangers, posting up somewhere public, etc. Not necessarily the provider. February 11, 2008 2:01 AM
	Vasudev said: I think Google also have paid storage program for extra storage. "Google now offers a way to purchase more storage space to use with some Google services (currently Gmail and Picasa Web Albums). This extra storage acts as overflow when you run out of free storage space in either service" And there's Paid Google Premier Edition where one gets Email with up to 25 GB of storage per custom email address. February 11, 2008 9:15 AM